You are here

Alma Brothers Plead Guilty To Child Pornography

Two Alma brothers were sentenced to a combined 55 years in prison Friday after pleading guilty in Crawford County Circuit Court to 19 counts of viewing, possessing or distributing child pornography.

Wendel Vaughn Smith, 46, was sentenced to 40 years in prison plus 40 years suspended after pleading guilty to 12 counts of distributing, possessing or viewing matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child. William Vincent Smith, 48, was sentenced to 15 years in prison plus 25 years suspended after pleading guilty to four counts of the same charge.

Wendel Smith was originally charged with 20 counts and William Smith five counts, before they reached a plea agreement with prosecutors and avoided a Feb. 15 trial.

The Arkansas Attorney General’s Cyber Crimes Unit began investigating the brothers on Sept. 2, when an agent identified a computer in Arkansas offering to distribute child pornography, according to an incident report.

After it was traced to a residence in Alma where the brothers live, agents with the attorney general’s office and Crawford County sheriff’s deputies executed a search warrant in the 200 block of Warrick Road on Oct. 27.

A subsequent forensic examination of the brothers’ desktop computers revealed child pornography and evidence that child pornography had been deleted from the machines, according to the report.

Evidence recovered during that examination also showed that child pornography downloaded Sept. 2 from the I.P. address shared by the brothers came from the computer William Smith owned, according to the report.

The report also indicated that multiple external hard drives containing child pornography had been connected to both computers.

Multiple images of child pornography were located on those drives by the Cyber Crimes Unit Forensic Lab in Little Rock, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office.

Wendel Smith admitted searching for and viewing child pornography, but his brother denied any involvement, according to the incident report.